Hungary is one of the European countries whose education system has repeatedly been diagnosed as showing below average performance with above-average variance between schools, when compared with other countries participating in the OECD’s PISA survey. This article explores how this diagnosis was received by domestic actors and discusses the main characteristics and arguments of the national public debates invoked by PISA. The national PISA discourse is analyzed by looking at how the problem... Read more ...

In an era of post-bureaucratic regulation, transnationalisation and evidence-based policies, the appeal for change in any policy domain is always an appeal for research and expertise (both national and international). Knowledge and cognitive authority legitimize public policies. ―Evidence‖ is often lacking, though. Read more ...

A lack of public debate, lack of listening to the voice of local actors is the most commonly articulated criticism to the events of the PA, most decisions were made top-down, with very little influence by local actors, especially at the beginning of the program. Read more ...

The most popular international instrument of the Educational field, PISA, did not affect the SEN-field (directly): "In the PISA survey the sample‘s margin of error is 5 % and since the rate of SEN children is usually below 5 %, in most of the countries these children were not included in the analysis. It is especially true for countries where these children go to segregated schools or special classes".
But there is a series of SEN-specific international institutions and instruments. The... Read more ...

Public coverage of the Last Desk Program can be considered as limited (as compared to parallel government programs); but the contrary could also be true: the issue (of the Roma unduly diagnosed as mentally retarded) had got quite a big publicity. Read more ...

The paradigm shift can be interpreted as the introduction of novel policy concerns (de-segregation and inclusion) inspired by novel experts, instead of state bureaucratic regulation modes, along with the emergence of conflicting disciplinary knowledges. Read more ...

There are two competing hypotheses about the actors of the public action integrating SEN students. Read more ...

The way Europe relates to bureaucracy and post-bureaucracy is complex, because Europe itself is diverse and comprises different spaces where tensions between bureaucracy and postbureaucracy play out in various ways. This new context challenges both research and policymaking, requiring much greater reflection on the nature of knowledge and its mobilization in policy. These problems were the central concern of the European project KNOWandPOL.